Nocturnal Pleasures
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Streets Of Fire
CD Liner Notes
By John Tobler, 1994
With one
of the biggest albums of 1993 having been Meat Loafs Bat Out
Of Hell II, it is my distinct privilege to introduce this album
(for the first time on CD in Britain) which could be termed a blood relation
to the original 1978 Bat Out Of Hell which had spent eight
years on the UK album chart by the end of 1991 and to Bat Out Of
Hell II, which entered the UK album chart at Number One and sold
a million copies in a month. Meat Loaf is only peripherally involved in
the soundtrack to this 1984 fantasy film, Streets Of Fire,
but Mr. Loafs main man, one eccentric songwriting genius named Jim
Steinman is heavily involved.
After the incredible success of Bat Out Of Hell which has
been certified seven times platinum (for sales of 7 million plus), and
featured the giant voice of Meat Loaf performing the amazingly surreal
songs of Steinman, it took nearly four years before a follow-up album
was released, due to a series of strange events. Meat Loaf was unable
(or possibly unwilling?) to sing the songs Steinman had written for a
second album, Bad For Good (as in permanently putrid) not
least because he had been touring relentlessly since Bat had
first been released and must have been both mentally and physically blitzed.
Steinman was forced to write another complete albums worth of songs
to which Meat Loaf was rather more partial, enough to allow him to record
them as Dead Ringer which was released in the last quarter
of 1981, four months after Steinmans own version of Bad For
Good had made the Top 10 of the UK chart.
If anything Bad For Good eclipsed Bat Out Of Hell
for sheer over-the-top bravado. Those familiar with Bat Out Of Hell
II may be interested to know that Rock And Roll Dreams Come
Through, Out Of The Frying Pan (And Into The Fire) and
Lost Boys And Golden Girls all first appeared on Bad
For Good in 1981, 12 years before Meat Loaf included them on the
chart-topping sequel to his multi-million seller. Todd Rundgren, who produced
both Bat Out Of Hell and Bad For Good, had this
to say about Steinman: His voice is similar to Meats - not
as bombastic, but as tremulous and melodramatic and I would say that if
the uneducated listener closed his eyes, hed probably have a hard
time distinguishing the difference. Steinman isnt quite so operatic
but he has the same hysterical, emotional pitch, and the overall effect
is that you suddenly realize that Bat Out Of Hell was a Jim
Steinman album, but with this other guy, Meat Loaf singing on it.
After that, Steinman didnt record again for a while, instead becoming
a highly successful (if erratic and unconventional) songwriter/producer
working with an increasingly unlikely collection of clients, ranging from
Barry Manilow (!), who had a US & UK Top 20 hit with Read Em
And Weep in 1983, to the same years international chart-topping
single by Bonnie Tyler, Total Eclipse Of The Heart, and its
platinum parent album, Faster Than The Speed Of Night, as
well as other later successes with Tyler to 1984s US Top 50 hit
by Barbra Streisand, Left In The Dark to Air Supplys
1983 million seller Making Love Out Of Nothing At All - and
then, in 1984, the Streets Of Fire movie soundtrack, which
is the reason youre reading this.
Bat Out Of Hell was supposedly either the precursor or the
sequel (or maybe both) to Steinmans Neverland project,
a futuristic version of Peter Pan - as an aside, Meat Loaf
was scheduled to play the part of Tinkerbell in a proposed
movie of Neverland, which has yet to happen. When reminded
that he would be playing the part of a fairy, he made it clear that the
character would be known as Tink and would be more like a genie than a
fairy. Streets Of Fire must have instantly appealed to Steinman
as a Neverland substitute - his gothic musical tastes (Wagners
mentioned as a favorite and an influence) made him an obvious choice as
a major contributor to noted film director Walter Hills exaggerated
cartoon morality play, whose plot went something like this: a gang of
bikers known as The Bombers kidnap a beautiful rock star, Ellen Aim (played
by Diane Lane) because their leader, Raven (an utterly evil Willem Dafoe),
fancies her. Her wimp manager, Billy Fish (a fine performance by Rick
Moranis, the nerd-like star of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids),
doesnt know what to do until Ellens ex-boyfriend, Tom Cody
(a hunky hero played by Michael Pare looking like Clark Gable with built-up
heels) arrives in town (a kind of nightmare New York) to see his sister
Reva (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and hears the news. Hed split with
Ellen because she wanted to become a rock star and he didnt want
to be trailing round after her and hes not inclined to rescue her
from a rough part of the city known as The Battery until his sister along
with Fish and a tough female vagrant, McCoy (Amy Madigan, later star of
Field Of Dreams) in various ways convince him that he should.
As in all good fairy stories, the good guys win and the bad guys are sent
away with their Harley Davidson between their legs (leaving just enough
room for their tails), but the hero doesnt get the girl, for more
than one night and strides purposefully toward the horizon, while the
wimp gets the girl back - for the time being. Its an excellent move,
most entertaining and with spectacular stunts, although the squeamish
might consider it excessively violent (which it isnt really - this
is comic-book-action, but with real people).
The entire movie is accompanied by and exceptional and varied soundtrack.
The overall score was composed by Ry Cooder (who also worked in that role
on several other notable Walter Hill movies, including The Long
Riders, Crossroads and Southern Comfort,
but Cooders contribution to the soundtrack album is minor - just
one track, Hold That Snake. However, Steinman wrote two epic
songs, Nowhwere Fast (also recorded by Meat Loaf on his 1984
album, Bad Attitude) and the otherwise unrecorded Tonight
Is What it Means To Be Young, a definitive Steinman classic. Both
are performed by a studio group known as Fire Inc., led by Steinman probably
playing piano, with vocalists Laurie Sargent, Holly Sherwood, Rory Dodd
and Eric Troyer - Sherwood was later one of the featured vocalists on
Original Sin, a 1989 album by Pandoras Box, which was
actually another Steinman venture, but one which has sadly never been
recognized as the masterpiece it certainly is - even a recent Record
Collector feature on Meat Loaf and Steinman failed to mention it.
Eric Troyer, who appears on several of the albums mentioned above is also,
its interesting to know, a current member of ELO Part 2 and can
be heard on John Lennons Double Fantasy comeback album,
while Rory Dodd has similarly worked extensively with Steinman.
Two great tracks like these would make this album a desirable commodity,
but theres plenty more - The Blasters, the uncompromising Los Angeles
rock-a-billy group, appear in the movie playing in a bar where they accompany
a GoGo dancer in a G-String and their One Bad Stud (an obscure
classic written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were responsible
for such timeless hits as Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog,
Yikety Yak, Charlie Brown Poison Ivy,
Ruby Ruby and many more) is excellent - it was originally
recorded (in 1954) by the Honey Bears, fact fans - as is Blue Shadows,
written by Blasters guitarist Dave Alvin, whose brother Phil was the groups
vocalist. Legendary New Orleans saxophonist Lee Allen guests with The
Blasters and briefly appears on the screen with them as well as on the
album. Laurie Sargent performs both Sorcerer (written by Stevie
Nicks) and Never Be You on the movie soundtrack album but
on the soundtrack album the respective vocalists are Marilyn Martin (who
duetted with Phil Collins on the 1985 US chart-topper, Separate
Lives, featured in the movie White Nights) and Maria
McKee (who topped the UK chart in 1990 with Show Me Heaven,
also from a movie, Days Of Thunder). Also worth noting is
that Never Be You was written by Tom Petty (who produced the
McKee version) and fellow Heatbreaker Benmont Tench and was recorded in
1985 on the Rhythm & Romance album by Rosanne Cash, who
also released it as a single - which topped the US country charts. It
would appear that Petty himself has yet to release his own version of
the song
What next? The Sorels, a black vocal group, whose tour bus is hijacked
by Cody and his chums to get them through a police roadblock, become Ellen
Aims backing vocal group and are managed by Billy Fish. They also
perform a glorious pastiche of Fifties doowop Countdown To Love,
written by Kenny Vance a founder member of Sixties hitmakers Jay &
The Americans, and superbly performed on the soundtrack album by Greg
Philliganes, whose name should be familiar to Eric Clapton fans - he was
keyboard player in Claptons band on several recent albums. As another
bonus, Dan Hartman performs I Can Dream About You, his only
US Top 10 hit, on the album, although on the screen its performed
by the doowop quartet. Deeper And Deeper is heard over the
films end credits as performed by The Fixx, a British techno-pop
group who had four US Top 40 hits in 1983/4, and overall, this is a soundtrack
album which could easily have been released in 1994, but is in fact ten
years old - ahead of its time, or what?
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